Monthly Archives: August 2013

The Poincare conjecture

Posted on August 29, 2013 by John Roe

The next few sections of Chapter 1 are intended to introduce some key examples of constructions with manifolds: The high-dimensional Poincaré conjecture and the h-cobordism theorem Milnor’s exotic spheres Variation of Pontrjagin classes within a homotopy type In the version … Continue reading →

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Manifolds = Bundles + Handles

Posted on August 24, 2013 by John Roe

The slogan in the title is one that I came up with for the book (or at least I think I did, though of course I may have stolen it from somewhere that I have now forgotten).  In my opinion … Continue reading →

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Steenrod squares

Posted on August 21, 2013 by John Roe

The Steenrod squares are discussed at some length in Chapter 5 of the book (so we’re getting a bit out of sequence here).  But they are also, of course, closely related to characteristic classes: Milnor and Stasheff’s book defines the … Continue reading →

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